After learning to discriminate tactually between a convexity and a concavity, 101 children aged three to eight years were presented a photograph of the convexity and the concavity. The relevance of egocentric, environmental, and lighting-specified frames of reference was manipulated by changing the position of the subject's head, rotating the…

A total of 45 fifth grade students were the subjects of an experiment offering support for a component of learning strategy (memory imagery). Various theoretical explanations of the image-tracing phenomenon are considered, including depth of processing, dual coding and frequency. (MS)

Several experiments tested the occurrence of the "Kamin effect", i.e., the deficit in performance of an incompletely learned avoidance task, in terms of discrimination (choice) behavior by rats. (Editor/RK)

A study involving 60 blind children (in grades k-2) was conducted to validate the hypothesized order of a series of tactual discrimination tasks and to determine the grade level(s) at which most "normal blind" children successfully perform simple tactual discrimination tasks presented on the Optacon. (SBH)

Thirty 4- and 5-year-olds with specific language impairment (SLI) and 30 normally developing peers participated in a discrimination learning-shift paradigm. Both groups were equally successful in extracting regularities from recurring nonverbal stimuli and in making shifts. Findings failed to provide evidence that children with SLI are less able…

Two studies compared the effectiveness of two procedures (multiple examples across trials and within trials) in teaching 10 students (ages 10-20) with moderate disabilities functional word discriminations. The first procedure was superior in acquisition; the latter procedure, however, was better under generalization for most participants.…

Two experiments examined six-month-olds' ability to form an abstract containment category. Results indicated that, after habituation to object pairs in a containment relation, infants looked reliably longer at an example of an unfamiliar versus familiar containment relation, indicating that they could form a categorical representation of…

The problem of teaching relational discriminations to people with mental retardation is examined. The limitations of several commonly used teaching procedures are discussed and alternative approaches to simple-discrimination learning are described. Results of two preliminary single-subject studies demonstrating the feasibility of these approaches…

The investigation of interactions between the abilities of stimulus discrimination and simple learning and two instructional variables (discrimination difficulty and degree of overlearning) with 27 mentally retarded adolescents found an interaction between stimulus discrimination and the number of words presented at one time for learning…

Comparison of 48 cerebral palsied individuals (aged 10-18), either with impaired speech or normal speech, found speech-impaired subjects were able to discriminate phoneme contrasts adequately in a word judgment task but performed less well on a phoneme discrimination "same-different" task possibly resulting from a weak memory for novel…

Point and linear symbols that represent certain areas of building interiors are discussed in light of their reliability and discriminability if used on tactual maps. A set of "optimally sized" symbols were evaluated with 21 blind observers. (Author/DB)

The study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of concurrent and isolation-intermix instruction in teaching four preschool children to read common words in their environment. Concurrent instruction resulted in students learning conditional discriminations in fewer trials and minutes of instructional time suggesting the value of teaching…

Five investigations examined three- and four-year olds' conceptions of the relationship between pictures and their referents. Results indicated that preschool children have difficulty holding in mind the distinct properties of picture and real referent, just as they tend to confuse the literal and intended meanings of utterances. (TJQ)